Bottom G wants you to know he’s more than just ‘gay Andrew Tate’

Last month, cryptocurrency-based online casino Duel broadcast a blackjack livestream, which it said would be hosted by former professional kickboxer turned controversial masculine influencer, Andrew Tate.

But while the dealer — a bald man with a dark beard, wearing a black T-shirt, tight suit and sunglasses — looked like Tate, he didn’t act much like the masculine, articulate broadcaster. His mostly silent performance was interspersed with sudden outbursts of singing, power contortions, ever more ridiculous dance moves, and most impressively a full split at the blackjack table. He also spontaneously argued with a male assistant next to him, pulling him by his tie to kiss him.

The show went viral, but sometime after it went live, Ossi Ketola, founder and owner of Duel, claimed that the casino had been scammed by an influencer management agency. “We’ve been promised a deal where Andrew Tate will be dealing blackjack in one of our live games,” Ketola wrote on Duel’s Discord server. “When he arrived at the studio, we realized we’d been cruel. The person standing in front of us bore some resemblance, but he wasn’t the real Andrew Tate. He was an imposter. By that point, we’d gone too far and the costs had been incurred, so we had to run with him to save face.” Duel did not respond to a request for comment regarding the alleged bait and switch.

But just who He was This “charlatan”? His real name is Brian Michael Hinds, although many quickly identified him as “Bottom G”, a half-German, half-Barbadian social media star who, despite looking like Tate, acts every bit as his exact opposite, flamboyantly swinging and twirling from Miami Beach to Barcelona, ​​ready to explode into song at any moment. Even the name “Bottom G” is a coded play on Tate’s self-imposed title of “Top G”.

Photo: Ecatepe Michaels. Courtesy of J. Connor Management

Hinds, 29, tells WIRED that Duel fully realized it was hiring Bottom G, not the real Tate, who had separately advertised for the casino on terms unknown to the public. In a statement to WIRED, Duel denied intentionally hiring a lookalike.

“Of course that was the whole request,” Hinds says of Duel’s livestream via Zoom call from Istanbul, where it’s 2 a.m. Hinds, a well-known night person, whose resume includes singing on the German version of American Idol Dancing at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, he says that he does not have a fixed address, and travels wherever the opportunity arises. “I’m with the streets,” he declares. “I’m everywhere.” Hinds says that because of the success of the Duel clips, he now has offers to perform his songs at a show in Bangkok and at a wedding in Las Vegas — less because people want a Tate-like look per se and more because they are thrilled by his joie de vivre. “My true fans understand that,” he says. Hinds also plans to work with Duel again.

This is the surreal life of an aspiring gay pop star who finds accidental fame through a bizarre relationship with a man notorious for his misogynistic views. (Both Tate and his brother have been accused of rape in multiple countries; they have also been accused of human trafficking in the United Kingdom. The couple has denied all of the accusations.)